The Effect of Linguistic Experience on the Perception of Pitch Contour

Studies conducted in the area of tone perception suggest that experience with tonal features such as pitch height, direction, duration, and contour in the L1 of the listener affect the perception of such features. This study consists of a categorical perception experiment to investigate whether native experience with a tone language affects the perception of pitch contours. Subjects are divided into two groups: native Mandarin speakers and native English speakers. The central hypothesis of this study is that Mandarin speakers would perceive a continuum between the rising tone and the falling-rising tone categorically, while English speakers would make no such distinction. Results from a discrimination task indicate that neither the Mandarin group nor the English group perceived the tonal continuum categorically. This may be accounted for by the fact that differences between Tone 2 (rising) and Tone 3 (falling-rising) in Mandarin are perceptually ambiguous for both native and non-native listeners.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Social Sciences

Grantor

Rice University

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Galindo, John

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Englebretson, Robert

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Niedzielski, Nancy
• Achard, Michel

• Pitch perception
• Linguistic experience effect
• Pitch
• Mandarin
• Tone perception
• Speech perception
• Mandarin tone

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1911/76730

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.rice.edu:1911/76730